If you thought the idea of 8 spiders was hard to swallow...

I don’t even know where it originated, or if it should be referred to as an “urban legend” or “old wive’s tale” or what, but regardless- everyone has heard of the alleged fact that the average human eats 8 spiders a year in their sleep. (Some sources say it's 8 spiders a week!)

Ugh, sounds so disgusting. There you are, innocently dreaming away when a busy-bodied 8-legged freak decides to get all up in your business, and make your mouth it's new hangout spot. Little do they know that their presence on your tongue triggers your biological response to start chewing, and it’s bye-bye Itsy Bitsy.

Even though I heard this “fact” multiple times, I easily dismissed it as lore. Until… I woke up a few times with things that looked suspiciously like spider-legs stuck in my retainer. (Yes, I still wear my retainer. Big-ups to Dr. Drummond!) And then there was that time that I woke up and blew my nose, only to find a curled up dead baby spider in my snot. Ew eww ewww!

I begrudgingly accepted the fact that maybe people do eat bugs in their sleep, and even though it was disgusting to think about, it’s not like we’ve heard of anyone dying from this, so it can’t be that bad? Right? Right?! (The stories about the unlucky person who had a Black Widow crawl into their drooling mouths have yet to circulate I guess?)

Thinking about it in broader terms (and by that, I mean beyond myself), people around the world voluntarily eat insects all the time. Bugs are supposed to be a great form of protein, and tasty to boot. I mean, who can argue the wisdom the great Judy Blume has imparted on us? She was cognizant of these bug-eating issues, and tried to educate a whole generation by writing multiple “fiction” books on this very topic. There is “Superfudge” and the nice old neighborhood lady who made delicious chocolate chip cookies with worm bits, and then the descriptively titled “How to Eat Fried Worms,” just to name a few. Judy obviously knew what was up. (Either that, or she had a loose-lipped husband that worked in a peanut butter plant?)

Anyway, with the recent far-reaching outbreak of salmonella in a Georgia peanut-butter factory, food cleanliness has been brought to the forefront of the daily news and people’s imaginations. So people, imagine hearing the news of what is really, legally in your store-bought food.

Yes.

Ohio University conducted a study which shows that we eat from one to two pounds of insects each year, without knowing it.

The following sounds like ingredients Harry Potter and the Weasley twins would need for a batch of trick sandwiches for the Slytherins, but really- these are things in YOUR grocery cart:

30 insect fragments and at least one rodent hair mixed up in your creamy
nutty deliciousness that is peanut-butter.

20 maggots of varying size in any given can of vegetables.

Up to 25,000 plant lice in a measly 10 ounces of beer. (And, I could go on.)

Yup- the government knows about, and condones this!
In fact, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) publishes a booklet that lists the maximum amount of “defects” each food item is allowed to contain before health problems arise. The rules are changing constantly, and there have already been six different versions of “The Food Defect Action Levels: Levels of Natural or Unavoidable Defects in Foods That Present No Health Hazards for Humans” since 1995. Among the booklet’s list of allowable “defects” are “insect and rodent filth (both hair and poop), mold, insects, rot, insect larvae (maggots), mites, insect
eggs, parasites, mildew and foreign matter (which includes 'objectionable' items
like “sticks, stones, burlap bagging, and cigarette butts”).

As anyone who has ever picked a fresh piece of fruit or vegetable knows, nature is unpredictable and invasive. Even if you’re personally over-seeing small quantities of produce growing in your backyard, it is impossible to keep the wayward worm, spider, or other “natural contaminant” out of your apples, corn, or green-beans. Now imagine what a food processing factory must be like, with different personnel of different skill-levels in and out all day long, huge food containment areas that are impossible to micro-manage, and rodents and insects that are biologically attracted to the food. The FDA allows the presence of a certain amount of naturally occurring “defects” t our food because it is “economically impractical to grow, harvest, or process raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects." Meaning- it would be way too expensive to implement systems where every piece of food, everywhere, was kept in pristine condition, especially when the vast majority of “defects” occurring are completely harmless. (When food items do exceed the FDA approved "defect" percentages, they are immediately removed and disposed of.)

Interesting side note- a man who had worked in a food factory for a number of years did develop a way to keep foods safe from bugs and rodents. He implemented his new techniques at a local mustard factory. The resulting “pure” batches of mustard contained zero “defects,” and yet everyone who sampled it complained that it tasted funny. So, not only do the bugs, etc., add flavoring that we like to our common food items, we have been consuming them for so long that we are unconsciously accustomed to this, and our taste-buds have come to expect these surprise ingredients.

We only consider these things to be gross due to our nation’s current perception of things. The FDA considers these defects to only be “offensive to the senses,” which is to say “ugly” as opposed to “harmful.” Bugs in our food is really not bad — many people in the world practice entomophagy (eating bugs). "They're actually pretty healthy," says Dr. Philip Nixon, an entomologist at the University of Illinois.

The unsettling part comes from the fact that despite food’s eye-catching packaging and nutritional labeling, we don’t really know what we’re putting into our mouths. However, we have been eating these things all of our lives, and just didn’t know it. These additions to our foods are not hurting us, nor harming us physically in any way, and are in fact increasing the food's nutritional value and taste. While ignorance is bliss and most Americans are not ready to see a fly or a mouse leg in their cereal or loaf of bread, if the "defects" are ground-up into unidentifiable bits and mixed in with the other food ingredients- should we even care if we’re eating it?

It took me a few minutes to really stomach (ha) the concept, but walking down the long hall to the bathroom (it seems this where I do my best thinking?) I decided that it’s like making the best of everything nature has to offer, and not letting anything unnecessary go to waste- and instead just go to your waist.